Strong Enough to Die: A Caitlin Strong Novel

by Jon Land

  That cleared a path to the truck and he took his boys and Goodwin in tow for the final stretch, feet that might have been yards. Cort Wesley’s ears were nearly deaf from all the gunfire and the stench of sulfur thickening in the smoke made him feel sick.

  But he still managed to heave his boys over the truck’s heavy steel rails into the bed and then reached down to hoist Goodwin after them. Goodwin’s back arched with a sudden spasm, Cort Wesley left to fear he had broken the man’s withered spine until Goodwin crimped himself into the fetus position once inside the bed.

  Cort Wesley left the three of them there and ducked back to the cab, shouldering a 12 gauge shotgun and whipping round an AR-118 Amelite assault rifle, a semi instead of a full automatic, which suited him just fine.

  He leaped up on the truck’s hood, felt it buckle under his weight as he began sighting in on anything that moved.

  The gloriousness of it all might have moved Paz to tears if he’d had occasion to celebrate the moment. The demons inside him that raised the questions he’d posed to the confessional priests were being slain at last. In the killing fields before him there was purpose and understanding, the men dropped by his bullets falling to a greater cause that at last defined him.

  He reloaded for the third time, fresh magazines snapped home in place of expended ones left hot on the gravel floor. He felt the ping after ping of bullets against his body armor, was certain at least two more found him, making four in all. He’d worry about the severity of the wounds later, for now rejoicing in the electricity dancing in the air with the gunfire that recharged and refueled him.

  The only thing missing was the woman. He wanted to meet her eyes again to see if they were as deep and clear as he recalled. The meaning he’d found in them had filled Paz with the one emotion he was utterly unfamiliar with: fear.

  The Ranger had scared him with her virtuous intensity, her willingness to die for strangers while Paz had so often lived to kill them. Their essences merging, Paz seeing what he needed to become, understanding in that moment the crux of everything that had drawn him to Kierkegaard’s ramblings on spiritual evolution.

  So this, this was his becoming, his great moment of control over a cosmos he had misunderstood up until now. His own country, the only home he’d ever known, was gone for him now and Paz felt strangely liberated by that reality.

  Above the clamor and crackle of fire and gunshots, Paz heard the bay of game birds soaring through the sky to announce the promise of a dawn that would leave him seeing the world in a new light. He was certain of that much, even as he racked back the slides on his guns and began firing anew.

  102

  CASA DEL DIABLO, THE PRESENT

  Caitlin felt the bullets drumming overhead as she pushed herself along the floor on her stomach, tasting bitter dust on her tongue. The din of the machinery had the dual purpose of disguising the approach of Garza’s men toward her, as well as hers toward them. She figured the first man she saw would be baiting a trap, so she ignored his head popping up and continued on, coming around enough to bring her on a path that should cut across that of the men lying in wait.

  The man whose head had popped up looked puzzled, turned his gaze sideways and to the right.

  Caitlin lurched upward and followed his eyes with her bullets. Four men caught in the line of her two pistols, two of them felled instantly by her fire.

  Around her the conveyor continued to curl around, shedding boxes no one was there to neatly lift off. Bullets clanged into a machine just above. Caitlin rolled sideways and found a space between the machines up an aisle where a set of legs attached to boots stood. She opened up with both her pistols and the boots tipped sideways, accompanied by wails of pain that rose briefly over the shouts, orders and gunfire coming from outside in the square.

  Caitlin thought of Peter, Cort Wesley and his boys, resolve hardened anew by why she was doing this. She heard the thunk of heavy footsteps and rolled onto her back, firing up at two figures who’d rushed her across the conveyor, scattering boxes as they went. They crumpled atop each other to be swept away atop the churning belt.

  Her pistols clicked empty, two fresh ones to be found near the bodies curving away from her now. Caitlin lurched atop the conveyor and scrambled forward ahead of its pace. She leaped down from the belt near a body that had dropped near the shrink-wrap dispenser that coated the boxed chips in a final, protective seal; had just crouched to retrieve the dead man’s pistol when Garza himself spun out a yard before her, gun angled down in line with her face.

  Cort Wesley stopped firing, his ears filled with a ringing that drowned out all other sound. He felt as if someone had stuffed cotton in them and he couldn’t pull it out. He had shells left in both his Armelite rifle and his 12 gauge, but there was no one left to fire them at. Garza’s troops were now divided between the bodies strewn everywhere and survivors fleeing into the night with the workers from the assembly plant.

  As he leaped down from the truck’s hood, Cort Wesley nonetheless remained wary of gunmen still poised in windows or on rooftops. But none offered any fire as he swept around to the truck’s rear, his heart thudding almost loud enough for him to hear.

  “Dylan! Luke!” he called. His voice sounded like garbled static in his own ears. “Dylan, Luke!” he repeated, begging for a response as he leaned in over the truck bed’s side.

  Dylan eased Luke up first, then himself to follow. He was huffing for breath, his face twisted in relief and, for the first time in more than a day, the absence of fear. Luke’s cheeks were tear-stained and he was sniffling. Cort Wesley reached out for him and his younger son collapsed in his arms, only one arm used to comfort the boy while the other clung fast to the 12 gauge.

  “It’s done, Goodwin,” Cort Wesley said, but the Ranger’s husband didn’t stir. “Goodwin?” He slid Luke away and felt for a pulse. “Oh, shit.”

  While up the street a ways, the massive figure who had saved all their lives sank to his knees.

  There was no one left to shoot, a fact greeted by Guillermo Paz with a strange emptiness and detachment. His hands had cramped up so badly he couldn’t discard his assault rifles. He felt tired but relaxed, as if a soothing nap was about to take hold.

  Paz scanned the street in all directions, resplendent in this world surrounded by corpses of his making. In the new way he defined his life and existence, killing these men had actually meant something. Paz felt awash with true triumph, clean in a way he could not comprehend, even though the dank sweat rising through his clothes smelled like spoiled vinegar. He felt strangely content, having achieved the passion he’d seen in the Ranger’s eyes. The sight had left an indelible mark on his mind and became the final impetus needed to ensure his transition from what he was to what he would be from this day on. Not that Paz totally understood exactly what that was yet; he only knew that he liked what he was feeling.

  None of his dwarfs came forward, which he took to mean they’d all perished in the gunfight. Good men, yes, but easily replaceable. And replace them he would, although in that instant, Paz could not say exactly what kind of mission it would take now to demand his interest. He looked forward to visiting the first church he could find, of confessing the night’s actions to the priest.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I killed many men tonight but the cause was just and I need to know if God understands such things. . . .”

  But the blessing he truly needed was from the Ranger. Just wanted to meet her gaze again to see if he recognized what was there.

  Garza’s linen suit was filthy, his face dappled with sweat and grime. He seemed to have trouble catching his breath and the pistol looked uncomfortable in his hand.

  “Mujer de mal genio,” he snarled. “Now stand up.”

  Caitlin rose from her crouch slowly.

  “I want you to keep looking at me, el Rinche. I want to see the life die in your eyes when I kill you.”

  His own eyes bled hatred, the gun an afterthought in his mind, providing the
opening Caitlin needed. She barreled into Garza and felt him trying to jerk his gun around into her. The pistol roared, and for an instant Caitlin thought she’d been shot until she saw the gun angled slightly away from her, the bullet missing her by no more than an inch.

  She clamped a hand onto Garza’s wrist to keep the barrel off her and crashed forward until he slammed into the housing of the shrink-wrap dispenser. His shoulders set off the sensor, the spout spitting shrink wrap over non existent boxes. Garza snapped his face forward, to head butt her, Caitlin thought, until his teeth sank into her cheek.

  Caitlin screamed but held fast to Garza’s gun hand, surprised by the strength summoned from his wiry frame. It was like trying to hold back a train and she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep the gun off her much longer. All she could do was jerk her free hand out high and hard into his face, bending Garza downward and back.

  Under the spout of the shrink-wrapping machine.

  The plastic molded itself to his face, clinging to his skin to be sucked inside his mouth when he tried to breath through now sealed lips. Caitlin held Garza there as the machine continued to pfffft, pfffft, pfffft over him. His face vanished in the haze that had swallowed it, Caitlin feeling the heat of his pinned pistol clacking off harmless shots. With it finally emptied, his eyes bulged from stolen breath and finally came to rest on Caitlin’s. She held his gaze, until the life bled out of it and Garza’s eyes locked open for good.

  103

  CASA DEL DIABLO, THE PRESENT

  It took all of her energy just to walk out of the smoky remnants of the assembly plant. She had never felt so spent, not even after lugging Charlie Weeks back to their vehicle in the desert with a bullet inside her.

  She stepped off the wood plank sidewalk, heading toward the truck where Cort Wesley Masters was standing protectively over his sons, when she saw the massive figure from Maura Torres’s house kneeling in the street.

  Paz,he’d told her his name was when he called, Guillermo Paz.

  Mine’s Caitlin Strong, she had said back.

  I know.

  Their gazes met and held, for much longer than they had that night in Shavano Park.

  Guillermo Paz smiled at her.

  Caitlin turned away to seek out Cort Wesley again, something all wrong about the way he was staring at her. She knew before she reached the truck, before she looked into its bed to see Peter’s still form.

  She wanted so much to cry then, to just let it all out, but she was too beaten and exhausted to even let go. All she could do was sink into Cort Wesley’s arms, the two of them standing over his two boys huddled low by their feet. A shaft of moonlight hit them, just as the wind picked up, brushing the stench of blood and smoke through the air over the fallen bodies.

  “We gotta get moving, Ranger,” Cort Wesley said finally.

  Caitlin separated herself from him, turning her gaze up the street toward the giant again. But Guillermo Paz was gone.

  EPILOGUE

  The Rangers are what they are because their enemies have been what they were. The Rangers had to be superior to survive. Their enemies were pretty good . . . [the Rangers] had to be better . . .

  —Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers

  SAN ANTONIO, ONE WEEK LATER

  “I been officially reinstated,” D. W. Tepper told Caitlin in the rear of the limousine headed for Peter’s funeral.

  Caitlin wasn’t surprised, given that Tepper had been given credit for the daring operation undertaken by the Rangers in cooperation with Mexican authorities to finally bring down the leader of the murderous Mexican Mafia. As if emboldened by the news of Emiliato Valdez Garza’s demise, law enforcement agencies across the country launched similar raids on Mexican-Mafia strongholds, decimating their numbers in unprecedented fashion over the course of the last seven days.

  “I’m glad to hear that, Captain,” she said, “I truly am.”

  “Well, I’m not gonna ask you what your plans are right now. We still got plenty to sort through here, but when the time comes . . .”

  “What about Harm Delladonne, Captain?”

  “That’s one of the things we’re working on.”

  “He’s gonna skate, isn’t he?”

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves here, Ranger.”

  “This isn’t over, Captain. Not so long as MacArthur-Rain’s still out there gunning for us all.”

  Up in his loft, Delladonne selected a katana from his sword rack and began practicing his kata, making cut after cut. In spite of everything that had happened his motions felt freer, more relaxed. Garza, his secret town and chip assembly plant were all gone. Indictments would likely follow stateside, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle; there were too many people occupying seats of the highest power imaginable who wouldn’t want him talking. The first shipments of the Fire Arrow chip were safely stored right here at MacArthur-Rain’s headquarters, and it wouldn’t be hard to find another manufacturer to replace Garza. This would certainly placate his friends in Washington and give them call to help him silence the Ranger and her cohorts when the opportunity availed itself.

  Delladonne lost track of time, the repetition of his practice cuts taking him to a different plane where he was free to dream of the secure future he was helping to make for the United States.

  Then he heard the soft click of his security doors sealing closed, followed by the clack of steps across the bamboo floor below. Delladonne returned his sword to its sia and gazed over the railing.

  “Buenos días,” said Guillermo Paz.

  Caitlin arrived at the cemetery to find Cort Wesley Masters standing well back of the grave site with a son on either side of him, an arm over each of their shoulders. Caitlin had walked over and silently took his hand to lead all of them up to join her in the front.

  They stood now over the open grave of Peter Goodwin with Cort Wesley’s sons between them. His younger boy Luke clung to him while Dylan stood next to Caitlin.

  Captain Tepper had taken his rightful place amid all twenty-seven Rangers attached to San Antonio Company D more toward the rear. The ceremony itself was carried out in the very way it would have been if one of their own had been the deceased.

  For reasons she didn’t understand, losing Peter this time was harder than the first. She’d missed him then, but hadn’t missed being with him. She wondered if anything was worth all he’d endured and sacrificed, and that left her feeling lost, as if the meaning had been sucked from her life. With the slow loss of Casa del Diablo from memory and into legend, she wondered what she’d be left with.

  Had she squandered her second chance with him?

  Had she really wanted it?

  Caitlin turned to Cort Wesley to find him already looking at her. She didn’t know what his eyes were saying, but liked their message all the same.

  Paz gazed down at Harm Delladonne, now duct taped to his desk chair placed in the middle of his bamboo floor. “You believe in God, Belladonna? I asked you that before and you never answered me.”

  Delladonne looked up at him, didn’t speak.

  “Anyway, what I’ve been realizing lately is that He really does have a plan. Trick is to figure out your place in it, and I think I’ve finally got a much better notion about mine. Still a work in progress, though. That’s why I’m here.”

  As if on cue, the fire alarm began to screech.

  “What’s going on?” Delladonne demanded. “What have you done?”

  “Bringing your life’s work to end, Belladonna. Nothing but a hole left behind.”

  “Hole?”

  Paz leaned over, grimacing, to fasten one more strip of tape across the man’s mouth and then stepped back to inspect his handiwork.

  “Front-row seat, Belladonna,” he said over the blare of the alarm. “I imagine it’ll feel something like an elevator ride, express to hell.”

  Paz turned for the door, started to limp away, then stopped and swung round again.

  “Oh, something I was curious about. The name o
f your company, it comes from an article from a long time ago titled ‘MacArthur’s Rain,’ doesn’t it?”

  Delladonne looked up at Paz, stupefied.

  “I read the article in Spanish a few years back. Talked about how the great general wanted to rain nukes down on the Chinese in Korea, and if Truman had let him what a different place the world would be now. Everything different, the example set once and for all. Hey, look at the bright side, Belladonna.”

  Paz started limping for the door again.

  “You’re gonna get to experience the feeling of MacArthur’s Rain firsthand now.”

  After Caitlin had tossed the first shovel full of dirt atop her husband’s coffin, Dylan took her hand and held it tight, feeling just like Cort Wesley’s only smaller.

  The cool breeze carried the scents of fresh-cut flowers, carnations and lilies, she thought, as well as hibiscus trees. The leaves rustled pleasantly, drowning out the minister’s quiet ruminations about a man he had never met and who had no real grasp of the suffering Peter had endured for what he believed in.

  The ghosts of her present had left to join those of her past, none of them seeming to have the kind of hold on her they used to.

  “What now?” Cort Wesley asked her when it was over and the crowd had begun to disperse.

  “I was thinking about getting something to eat,” Caitlin replied, pretty sure that wasn’t the kind of answer he was looking for.

  “I grill a pretty mean steak.”

  “Really?”

  “Plenty about me you don’t know yet.”